The best one is when I slide a steak up my dungaree jacket: if I stick my stomach out (what’s left of it), it’s just about tight enough to hold the steak. At least long enough to get out, which isn’t that easy. You see I usually buy a loaf of bread. That makes it look okay: besides I couldn’t stick the loaf up there. I’ve had enough close calls as it is – so now I always try to steal some Limburger cheese along with it! – like tonight!!.. break it open, smear it on your hands and the checkout guy almost passed out… but no questions there I’ll tell ya. I mean what can he say to you – “you shit in your pants or something?” much less to anybody else AS LONG AS YOU’RE THERE-HA – no – you’re a paying customer – no matter how bad you smell you deserve a certain respect and anyway, that’s why I steal the limberger… because the smell’s so bad: they think there’s something so wrong with you, they can’t wait to get rid of ya so-they-can-say-what-they-really-wanted-to-say-in-the-first-place-HA – “VOMIT SALLY I swear the kid smelled WORSE THAN VOMIT!” meanwhile you got what you really wanted and you toss the limburger… and anyway I’ve never been caught
My most challenging was when I found myself out of a can opener to open the canned food I’d already stolen and was forced to “lift” some huge contraption about a foot and a half long, with about three pounds of wood and painted pictures of the Grand Canyon all over it, and all sorts of stuff dangling from it, the only thing I could find. The price being about two dollars, it was ridiculous to pay – But trying to get it up my dungaree jacket was another thing. So I figured the best thing to do was lower it down. Never go the other way, with all those prongs and other domestic weapons hanging from it (looked more like a fish lure anyway).
So after picking up two of those things as though I wasn’t sure which was more aesthetic, I walked around the gift shop (this was a gift shop by the way – where else would you find a thing like that anyway). So I browsed around a little more as though I had more items to buy. When I got to the magazine section, I took off the largest magazine I could find. While holding the magazine open as concealment from all customers, attendants, shopkeepers, clerks, store detectives and generally anyone who didn’t look like a shoplifter, I let one of those pronged things drop, into my jacket. If I didn’t bleed, it would go undetected. I walked back to the can opener department and put the other gaff back where it came from. Then as though I discovered the magazine was really an insult to my intelligence, I put it back. When I get out of the store, I walked away, slowly (never fast unless you plan on skipping the area). And I really wondered why it went so well, the can opener never once slipped down in my jacket. And then I saw it: there it was, sticking out the front of my jacket – a corkscrew – as though I had just sprung a spring through my belly button.
But I’m getting off the track again, the rest of my decline was more along logical lines: steaks, hot dogs, cigarettes, sandwich meat (very easy), boots and hats (the easiest – you see you simply try them on without assistance, and leave the old ones back on the rack). Steaks are easy too. The old one-two: two up, one down – other one’s up your jacket, then stick your stomach out. Once the meat started to leak, but rather than hope someone might think it was really a fresh appendix operation, I put it back.
So you see why it had to stop, wasn’t even a question of my luck running out, simply started to look too suspicious: walking out of that same store every time, with a considerably bulkier look than when I came in, corkscrews sticking out of my navel, blood oozing out of my jacket, and me just buying that one loaf of bread.
But My biggest ALMOST score! Yeah, was in a redneck bar! Where the deal went bad because I shot my mouth after they made a few cracks about my appearance: like my “long har” – “Ha-you look an Injun! or a Jew-in” to which I made a crack about only slaves and eunuchs wore short hair (this was the summer of ’65 when to be a real man you had ta have a crew cut that barely cleared the skin) and of course they didn’t have a clue what I talkin’ about
“Whad you say?” still grinning uncomprehendingly, but I think a few of’m were catching on so I explained to them that the only difference today is more men are eunuchs without knowing it – “and maybe that’s why you ask that question.” “Shut up!” said the guy in the corner and then old Buzz back to the old “whad you say?” stallin’ for thinking time. “You don’t speak English?” ” shut up! ” “or you don’t think?” “whad?” “well? Which is it?.. ” and oh-ho no No NO No no what was I doing I realized – what the hell am I doing.. so I got up, when it came to him – the answer to all of it: “YA FUCKIN’ FAG!” and I suppose that’s where I should have left it but I gave him some back talk anyway about it being his wishful thinking Christ – and I told him I was really a communist too Christ!! And THEN I TOLD HIM TO FUCK OFF!!! And THAT he understood because he gets up “Look ya punk!… ya wanna fighd or som’thin’?”
“HA-Do you?”
and then he stopped and looked at me with this real quizzical look like I’d said in Greek or something, then looked at his good ol’ boys like they were supposed to tell him what to do, so I told him what to do – when they all get up and that’s when it all started: one of them starts cuttin’ behind me, “Hey Manny, we got a real wise bastard here..” and then Manny starts to head me off and that’s when I noticed he had something in his hand and “hey now… ” I said backing towards the door. “… that’s just what I’m talking about.. even when your last resources excludes your brains, you fat-ass mental eunuchs can’t do a job by yourselves… you gotta ask your secret homosexual boyfriend Manny there to do what you can’t… ” and THAT did it! – MASS rush and the sudden realization! CHRIST except I kicked him right in the groin before I even realized what I was doing! And just as hard AS I COULD TOO oh yes!
And he dropped – just like that! and started vomiting while I just stared, while he just lay there twitching and I was shaking all over when one of them pulls this knife and I started screaming police at the top of my lungs and they all started yelling for him to stop, and I figured he’d stop or they’d stop him or somebody… somebody and so I started behind this table when one of them threw something and this guy behind me screams Christ screams! Like I never heard a man and I turn and his eye his eye Christ! A bottle or something his eye the blood just dropping out of it Christ and I remember grabbing that case next to Manny and swinging it at Charlie’s face and I missed and it opened and they were bags or something white powder all over the place and everybody was screaming like hell and I went tearing across the room knocking into people, most of them not even knowing what was going on, past the bar, everybody screaming, out the door into the hall and bounding down the stairs in about two steps and it sounded like I heard of elephants coming down after me and I was yelling police the whole way… down and out and up the next street and up the next but that eye running round the corner that eye that eye and opium, heroin, whatever all over the room and it probably still hasn’t settled yet and they’re probably all waiting for it to land so they can sweep it up before the cops come! But that eye that eye – in and out of a few more streets and alleys trying to find the car and I kicked that guy in the groin too ohh Christ run run run like a crazy bastard I couldn’t help myself uugh in the groin and that eye that eye until I got to the car and that eye that eye and I couldn’t believe it and I floored it and my mind my mind and I couldn’t even think about it and I just floored it and that eye that eye and I started taking those little white pills again too because I didn’t want to think about it…
And THAT was just the beginning…